Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-quantum-condensed-matter-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/section-a/a4/a/solution

Take the same segment length and a large common number of steps. The ideal walks have size proportional to ; excluded volume swells a three-dimensional chain to approximately and a two-dimensional chain to . Projection changes an isotropic walk's prefactor, rather than its exponent. The projected three-dimensional ideal walk has a smaller planar size than an otherwise equal two-dimensional ideal walk. Therefore the asymptotic ordering is
The following subparts make the size and projection factors explicit. Comparing root-mean-square sizes gives the same ordering as comparing mean distance magnitudes here.

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